


All In

by sdwolfpup



Category: due South
Genre: Gen, Reference to Child Abuse, Reference to animal death, reference to Vecchio/Fraser, reference to Vecchio/Irene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-02
Updated: 2007-12-02
Packaged: 2018-11-06 17:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11040729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sdwolfpup/pseuds/sdwolfpup
Summary: The only constant in Vegas is losing.





	All In

**Author's Note:**

> For the ds-shakespeare challenge. Quote was: I am constant as the northern star. - Julius Caesar, III.i. Thanks to brynnmck for beta.

The Bookman laid down his hand to quiet murmurs and a scattering of applause: three of a kind, nines high. His opponent - Mr. Smith he’d said, but the Bookman knew it was really Mr. Thomas Deckhauser from New York – shook his head and laid down his own hand, a pair of aces. There was a flush on his face, his forehead tight and wrinkled with worry, and he kept glancing at something over the Bookman’s shoulder. Langoustini’s bodyguard leaned forward and collected the pile of chips, lining it up for him while the dealer shuffled. The Bookman took that moment to glance back, saw a woman hiding in the shadowed edge of the crowd, her hands choking themselves.

Mr. Smith was sweating as he fingered the few remaining chips on his side.

“Not much money left,” the Bookman observed.

“Enough for one more,” Smith said, but he wasn’t looking at Langoustini at all. Smith ante’d up, the Bookman following, and the dealer tossed out their cards, each one making a soft hiss as it settled in front of the men.

Smith checked each card as it was dealt, his face unreadable to anyone who hadn’t been sitting across from him for the last couple of hours. The Bookman, as was his habit, waited until each card was dealt before checking his hand, and it took every last ounce of self-control to not react to what was there. A royal fucking flush. If he hadn’t known any better, he would’ve thought the dealer was cheating.

There was Smith’s tell – the quick glance over the Bookman’s shoulder, and the way his own shoulders drooped instead of firmed. He had a lousy hand.

“Number of cards, sir?”

Smith looked at the Bookman now, with dark and angry eyes. Thomas Deckhauser was broke, but not because he’d gambled it all away. He’d lost his job a year ago and then had recently spent all of his money paying for health care for the woman that stood at the edge of the crowd. The pair had come to Vegas to try to earn enough money for a last chance cure. He’d bluffed his way into Langoustini’s game, had outplayed two other high-rollers, and then had lost almost everything to the Bookman himself.

“Sir?”

“None,” Smith said, his voice confident, but not overly. The crowd murmured, intrigued. The Bookman had to admire his ability to bluff. Deckhauser had no way of knowing, though, he was playing against someone who was even better at that particular skill.

“And for you, Mr. Langoustini?”

A royal against what was likely a pair, maybe trips if Deckhauser was lucky, but Deckhauser hadn’t been lucky for a long time. It wasn’t the Bookman’s job to save people from their own desperation. Vegas was built on the backs of the desperate, and the glamour and glitz only looked good from far away. Anytime you got too close in Vegas, it got ugly.

The Bookman looked at his cards.

**Ten**

“Quiet, quiet,” Ray had whispered into his sister’s hair. She’d been curled up in his arms, the two of them sitting on her twin bed with the pink Barbie comforter. Frannie was ten, Ray just turned sixteen. “It was an accident.”

“But he’s _dead_!” she wailed, her whole slim body shaking. Ray thought she’d vibrate them both right off the bed.

“He didn’t feel nothing.” Ray had searched for something to say, remember what the adults had murmured at his grandfather’s funeral: “He went peacefully.”

Frannie had lifted her head, her face a streaky, reddened mess. “H-how do you know?”

Ray hadn’t known. He’d come home from his friend’s to find the house empty except for his father snoring in the shower, the hamster next to him and already dead. Ray had wanted to leave his father there, let someone else deal with the messes he was always creating, but even now, even with the memory of bruises on the same arms he lifted his father with, Ray wanted to hide this sight of him from his sisters. His sisters knew their father drank a lot and often. They didn’t know what he smelled like when he’d been sitting for a day in his own piss, and Ray wasn’t going to let them.

So he’d cleaned up the mess, tucked the hamster into a shoe box and thrown it out back, and been the one to break it to Frannie when she’d finally gotten home from shopping with Ma.

Now she was staring at him, wanting assurance, needing the lies he was getting way too good at telling. “I...it was my fault,” he said. She’d gaped at him, with a look so full of hurt that Ray had almost cracked and told her everything. But he figured the loss of a hamster would be better than a father, so he took it all, and escaped from her room when the crying started again.

**Jack**

_It wasn’t your fault._

That’s what they all assured him at the funeral. They’d usually follow it up with: _That bomb was meant for you. It was a total freak accident that Gardino got there first. Don’t blame yourself._

Ray would nod his head, accept the consoling clap on the back, and then escape to the next person to get through it all again. The only person who never told him that was the one person he would have believed it from.

When Ray came back to the station after Irene’s death, no one came up to him then, clapped him on the back and said it wasn’t his fault. He would’ve punched anybody who had, except for the one person who never should have said it anyway.

Jack had watched him for a week; Ray could feel it on his skin whenever he left the safety of his desk. Everybody else looked away when he passed, except Jack, who seemed to be daring Ray to meet his gaze.

Instead Ray had avoided him, but had Jack’s calls routed through him first, so that Ray could take the ones that might wear too hard on his grieving friend. Jack was just one man now; Ray still had someone he could rely on to help him. Ray found himself doing little things, stupid things, when Jack wasn’t looking – making sure his favorite snacks were available, making sure the coffee was always hot, steering the real crazies away from Jack’s desk when possible, intercepting Welsh if paperwork came back wrong and fixing it himself. Ray’d work late into the night, holding off blame and his own grief with the stark reality of white paper and slow typing. And Ray avoided meeting Jack’s eyes, afraid of what would happen, what he would see if he did.

Even when Jack eventually came to his desk, Ray kept his gaze somewhere around Jack’s neck.

“Vecchio,” Jack said, his voice low.

“Huey.”

They stared and not-stared at each other. Ray wondered if Jack had figured out the little things – _the worthless things_ , Ray thought – that he’d been doing. “We’re not even,” Jack had said. “Irene for Louis – that’s not a trade-off. That’s two separate tragedies.” He’d paused and then, with real feeling, added, “I’m sorry about her death.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

“You’re carrying it around; it’s all over you, Vecchio. But she wasn’t your fault. That was just people all making the wrong decisions at the same time. Dumb fucking luck.”

The words undid the knots that were holding him tight, and Ray had exhaled, loud, like he’d been holding his breath for weeks. He did look up then, met Jack’s stare and saw an opening there he never expected. “I’m sorry about Louis, Jack. I really am.”

“I know. But that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

“I know.”

“Good.” Jack tapped his fingers on Ray’s desktop, hesitated with words obviously on his lips, and then just shrugged and turned away. But a week later, when Ray was checking Jack’s desk for any leftover work after he’d gone home for the day, there was a note written in Jack’s bold, thickly-lettered hand: _Vecchio. Stop playing nursemaid. I don’t need your help anymore. –Huey_

Ray had grunted and thrown the note in the trash, but he did the paperwork that night anyway. They weren’t even, but at least they understood each other.

**Queen**

Irene had always owned Ray’s heart, even when just looking at Frank Zuko made Ray sick. When she had begged Ray for help one night after he’d climbed into her room, Ray had never thought of denying her. She’d said she needed to get away, that if she stayed, she’d die in that house.

Ray had had an after-school job already, cleaning up at a bar his Pop frequented. It was easy work as long as he kept to himself, kept out of his old man’s way the nights he was there. Working extra nights was easy to do with Irene desperate on the other end. Ray took the money he’d been saving for his new car – a Buick Riviera, long and gleaming in the sun – and gave her that, too. Ray had spent most of his life helping Ma keep order in the house, helping Pop out of – and into – bars. It was easy to help someone he loved, even if he was helping them leave.

**King**

Helping a man who had had no one else was the easiest thing Ray had ever done. Even if Fraser hadn’t been Canadian, it wasn’t like he was gonna say no to some assistance. Fraser had been new to the city, all alone and sticking out like an elephant in a strip joint – or, as Ray later learned, like a Mountie in a strip joint.

Loving a man who had no one else was terrifying. Ray always felt like he was one step from screwing up the whole thing and sending Fraser running back to Canada. Chicago wasn’t ever going to seduce Fraser, not with its noise and dirty air and dirty people. Ray sometimes wondered how it was possible he stacked up against an entire country that had universal health care and still come out on top, but when he and Fraser were wrapped around each other at night, that was something he swore he’d never ask about.

Instead Ray promised himself he’d keep fighting Canada back by talking too much and kissing too fiercely and loving Fraser too hard. And if Canada took Fraser anyway, Ray would help him go.

Fraser’s vacation to Canada had been its own kind of ordeal for Ray. Ray worried constantly that he’d get the call saying Fraser didn’t want to come back, that he was quite happy in the Norwest Territories, thank you kindly. But when Fraser did call the first time, a few days into his trip, it was just to report that he wanted Ray to set up a time for the Citizen’s Watch meeting next month, anytime would do, Fraser would be back and make himself available to attend. The rush to agree, to promise to handle it, backed up in Ray’s throat and he only nodded at the phone until Fraser was saying, “Ray? Ray? Can you hear me?”

When the FBI had come calling, there had been no decision at all. If Ray had turned it down, Fraser would have come back to Chicago just to say goodbye. One scared cop versus a whole country was no sort of choice at all. To keep Fraser from leaving, Ray had left first. That turned out to be the easy part.

**Ace**

Ray kept his face still, and slid two cards, the king and the ace, towards the dealer. “Two.”

“Two for Mr. Langoustini,” the dealer said. Two new cards hissed towards him: a three and a six.

“Bets, please.”

Ray put on an arrogant smirk. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, and pushed all of his chips in. The crowd murmured again.

“All in,” the dealer intoned. Deckhauser threw in his last chips, too, but there was already defeat in his eyes.

“Show hands.”

Deckhauser turned his hand over: two pair, eights over five.

Ray flipped his own hand over, and drowning out the crowd’s shocked gasp was a choked-off sob from somewhere behind his shoulder. He lifted one shoulder at Deckhauser’s open-mouthed stare. “The only constant in Vegas is losing,” Ray said, his voice pitched just enough to reach Deckhauser. “You better count yourself lucky and get the hell out of here, Thomas.”

Deckhauser went white, but he nodded, and Ray got up from the table, shrugging into the coat his bodyguard was holding open for him.

“Sorry you lost again, boss. I thought you had him.”

“It’s just money. They got my bath ready?”

“Just like you always like it, Mr. Langoustini.”

“Good.” The Bookman didn’t look back at the table, but the sound of celebration followed Ray all the way to the elevators. 


End file.
